Data Center Regions and Economic Development: Implications Derived From Economic Analysis

2.1. The Growth of Data: The Digital Universe

The single fastest growing commodity (if it could appropriately be called so) throughout the last few decades has been information. The “digital universe,” which represents “the data we create and copy annually” (International Data Corporation-IDC, 2014) is expected to grow to 44 ZB (a zetta byte is 1000⁴gigabytes) by 2020 from an estimated 4.4 ZB in 2013. This is an estimated compound annual growth of 39%, almost equivalent to doubling every two years.

In contrast, the world economy in real terms grows at much lower rates. The World Economic Outlook database (April 2015 version) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)projects the average real growth rate of the world economy to be 3.8% per annum between 2013 and 2020. When compared to world GDP growth rates, the growth rate of information—and thus data—will be significantly higher during the next years and perhaps decades.

In 2014, the digital universe was driven by businesses, government and consumers. According to IDC (2014), in 2013 consumers created 0.6 ZB, or14%, of the 4.4 ZB digital universe. Businesses and government created 3.8 ZB (86%), of which 1.5 ZB was directly from businesses and the remaining 2.3 ZB was through consumers.